Birthday
by Jessie Marsh
Summary: It's Strickland's birthday.
1. Chapter 1

**Birthday**

Rob groaned as he looked at the calendar on his cluttered desk. It was tomorrow. How had tomorrow come around so fast again? A wise old master at his school had once, in a rare glimpse of humanity, explained that as you age, though units of time remain the same, fractionally they become far shorter. Which was how it was tomorrow so soon. _Too soon._

Sighing, he noted that the desk before him needed to be cleared. Memos needed to be read; sent; and shredded. Letters needed to be read; sent; and shredded. E-mails needed to be read; sent and deleted. Later, drawers would need to be emptied. Boxes filled. His working life would be decimated into the space of one or two boxes; the size of a case of wine or a delivery of printer paper. _So much to do._

It would be somebody else's desk. Toying with the idea of leaving it to be somebody else's mess as well, he rose from his chair with the agreement of the clock. One last meeting with upstairs. _Was this how she'd felt? It was years since she'd left; years since he had seen her. Gerry's seventieth? Yes, he'd seen her then. Hardly to talk to though._

Blah after boring blah after achingly dull blah. How had he worked for these idiots for so many years? They weren't the same idiots that had been above him when he'd began reporting to them. Those idiots had already moved on. These were younger, more moronic shadows of them. He should have been reporting to people like Jack Halford. But people like Jack Halford never became pen-pushers and administrators. _Why was he thinking about Jack again? _

Coffee. Then the boxes. Pulled out a cupboard where he hadn't been aware of their presence; their contents ejected uncensored into the bin; placed on the desk. Refilled with the few mementos from around the room. Things sporadically positioned to remind him that there was a world outside of this office. A world that he needed to find his place in once more. No longer as a young man, just starting out; but as an old man, with eyes that had seen too much of the world to be excited by the prospect. He was tired. Too tired to be afraid. Tired enough that the exhaustion masked the thing he was truly afraid of. _He was alone._

Everything was ready. He'd only needed one box in the end. Forty years of his life equalled one box. He could write forty volumes about just one of the days he'd spent at work; that would be just enough to give justice to every moment in that day, every feeling felt. _Perhaps he should take up writing._

A knock on the door. A familiar face, a much older face than his, asking if he was going to bail on them. No, he'd see them down the pub. In fact, he was just about ready. _He was done._

"Right, well there's someone here to see you, so I'll just go get me coat and meet you down there," Gerry Standing grinned awkwardly, stepping aside and letting another familiar face take his place in the doorway. _Sandra._

"Hi," she said shyly. "Happy birthday."

She was older. But so was he. It had been ten years since she'd left UCOS. Ten years since she'd left him. Time had not been kind to him. He was a shadow of the man he had been; still a pillar of the force; still a formidable face in the fight against crime; still the broken, lost, expression of a man that he had been the day that she had walked out on him. _But she was here now._

"It's tomorrow, actually," he responded quietly. Was this an apparition? "Sandra? Is that really you?"

Her oceanic blue eyes, her sunshine gold hair, her deeply feminine way. All of it unchanged since the day he'd last seen her. That day when she'd walked out of his life forever. _Forever Never Lasts._

"Yes," she replied, matching his level. He was changed. When he'd first become her DAC he'd been younger, full of drive, of ambition. Now, she found him a man betrayed by fate. Left behind by his wife, his children, his friends. A man who'd settled behind the desk he'd become accustomed to. A man with no thought of change. _The man she loved._

"We're just off to the pub," he tried to inject some of the enjoyment that he should have felt at such an occasion. _What occasion? His birthday? His retirement? Six o'clock? Friday? Endings, all of them, endings._

"We?" she queried gently though she already knew the answer. Gerry, the last man standing in a UCOS changed beyond recognition since the day she had ripped the hand-written 'new crap' sign from their door, had filled her in the moment she had arrived; he'd barely allowed her to set foot on English soil. Somehow, over the years, Gerry and her former boss had become firm friends. _Off the record._

"Yeah, erm, Gerry and the UCOS boys reckon they owe me a drink," he suspected that the light, jokey, tone he wished to achieve had fallen flat. _When had Gerry become his only friend? Had he pushed everyone else away? Or had they simply left him behind?_

"Do you mind if I join you?"

"No," he replied, so quietly that it might have been his last breath.


	2. Chapter 2

_Thank you to everyone who is reading this and all the lovely reviews __ Here is the next part… Jessie xx_

**II**

Her hair must be dyed now. It was still blonde, though if he squinted really hard he was sure he could see wisps of white-grey missed by the hairdresser. His wasn't. It had never been blonde; sometimes he wondered when he stared at the grey reflection in the mirror in the mornings if it had ever been the rich oak brown that old photographs told him it had been. _Age, time, change. Did she dye it to forget? To pretend that it time wasn't catching them finally up?_

"So," she tried to start a conversation. To bring the shadowy form of her former boss into the light. The trouble was she didn't know what to say. Her and Gerry had talked non-stop from when he'd picked her up from the airport to when he'd left her in the stripped office of her old superior. But then, her and Gerry were like that. He had a whole family to talk about as well as work. She had work. They both had Brian. Dear Brian. She hadn't been able to get back in time. But she'd been there, last year, at the funeral. That was hardly a conversation starter though. _Silence._

"I know what I meant to tell you," Gerry rescued the muted table. "Do you remember Frank Patterson?"

"Oh god," Sandra grimaced. "Do I ever! What about him?"

Gerry's eyes twinkled for a moment as he watched both Sandra and Robert remember their mis-adventures with the pain-in-the-arse-former-DCS but the twinkle dwindled as he revealed his news: "Died last week."

"Oh."

Her eyes were still the same piercing sky blue. Ten years on the continent had done wonders for her complexion and her figure. She looked better than he ever had. Older, for sure, but better. _Damn._

His eyes were paler, if that was possible. A watercolour blue betraying the effects of age. She supposed he needed his glasses most of the time now. She knew she wanted hers more now. How Gerry had laughed when she'd put them on at lunchtime in the pub! She'd kicked him. Reminded him that twenty years ago it had been him squinting at menus. He'd not even been retirement age himself then. _And here they were._

"So, what are you going to do with your retirement?" she asked. _She needed to speak._

Robert shrugged. He didn't know. He hadn't thought too much about it. That was a lie. He thought about it all the time. He had no real hobbies. The yacht was too tempting to say. It needed work. Work he wasn't sure he could do. Because if he sailed the boat out, what was there to stop him falling over the side? Anything to stop the marching emptiness of time. _Time, stretching into nothingness._

"I told him he should come and work for UCOS!" Gerry joked. "A DAC for the collection, wouldn't be a bad coup!"

She engaged him in discussing the different old ranks that had passed through. He was the only one she knew now. Steve had gone back to Scotland, chasing Charlie. That Sasha hadn't lasted longer than the next sniff of a promotion. It was a young male DCI now in charge of the unit with Gerry, a former DCI from Manchester and a female ex-sergeant who was vaguely familiar to her. _Everything had changed_.

"Do you see much of Esther?" she asked when the conversation lulled once more.

"Yeah, yeah. Carole's joined the same needlework group or something," Gerry began again to lead the conversation while Robert looked on vacantly. "I got roped into picking her up one night and Esther was there. She's alright, considering. I mean, this is Esther we're talking about, she was always going to be alright. Spends a lot of time with Mark and the grandkids, the lad's ten now and the little girl's just turned six. Yeah, she's alright. You can see for yourself later anyway."

"Eh?" she frowned.

"Well," he spoke now in the manner of someone who has been keeping a great secret for almost too long for them to bear. "This, is just the beginning of the evening," he looked between his two old friends. "You didn't think the Met was really going to let you go without a party, did you? The rest of the gang is waiting for us at Mr. Chen's, so drink up guv, you've got a party to go to!"

Robert, whose interest had peaked and fallen with the grand reveal, seemed to sink even further into his reverie than he had been before. _Drowning._

"Gerry," Sandra said slowly. "Is there time for another drink first, before we meet the others? It's been so long, and we've barely had a chance to talk." _To clear the air._

"Er," he looked between them again. Robert was staring into his nearly empty glass while Sandra watched him, concerned. "Sure, why not? I'll, I'll just get them in."

Sandra waited until he had his back to them at the bar before reaching out and gently touching Robert's hand. He pulled away. "Robert?"

"How's Max?" he asked bitterly. Too bitterly. He wasn't really bitter. It had all changed a long time before. _Had it?_ _When? Before Sandra left? When Jack had left?_

"He went back to his wife." _No need for sentimentality._

"Oh, I'm sorry," but he wasn't. He didn't feel anything. He should have felt remorse with his friend. He should have felt shame from bringing it up. He could have asked Gerry. He should have asked Gerry. Should have asked him years ago. But they never talked about Sandra. It was like he knew. _Knew what?_

He could remember the last feeling he'd had. It was sadness. A great sadness. Esther Lane had taken hold of his arm as they'd walked away from the crematorium. She'd told him he was a good man. And all he'd felt was sadness. That this good woman had lost her husband. It was him that should have been reassuring her, though it felt like the other way around. _"I suppose we're both alone now," she'd said. Alone._

"Don't be," she said quietly as Gerry returned to the table with drinks. "I'm not."

"I'm just going to pop outside," Gerry judged that they were going to be a while and took his pint with him.

He should ask why she wasn't sorry. How it had happened. How long ago… He should feel something, but not even curiosity? Just the normal emptiness. He noticed that there was a fresh drink in front of him and reached for it. It was funny, just last week he'd asked Gerry whether he thought they drank too much. Gerry had replied 'who cares!' Gerry never changed. _Had he?_

The practiced movement of his right hand, exchanging one glass for the other, told Sandra that the pattern of habitual drinking was ingrained in his behaviour now. It had never been before. She supposed with some irk that it was the price paid for being friends with Gerry. He had no other strong ties, she knew that. Others around him had moved on, further up the ladder, further up the arseholes of the politicians, or retired early onto yachts and boats that moved further away. _The future used to be further away than the past, but at their age maybe it was just them that were further away._

"Do you still have your boat?" she asked brightly. Perhaps tapping into memories of happier times could lighten his mood. She was beginning to feel responsible for cheering him up before exposing the others to him.

"The Last Minuet?" he confirmed. "I'm thinking of giving her up."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. She needs some work. I can-"

He stopped short of saying _can't_. He couldn't quite admit it. That was one thing, at least. What had happened to the man in front of her?

"You know," she steeled herself for the long haul. "Brian was talking about that day the last time I saw him. When we came down and had drinks at the docks. You took us out a way, after Jack had spoken with that girl. He was saying, about how they were all moaning about going but had a really good day. Considering."

"Considering?"

"Well," she smiled sadly. "They did used to think you a bit of a prick. I think they were jealous. Then they were sorry because you never asked us down again after that! But you did go out again, with the boys, didn't you? Before Steve left?"

"Just after," he managed to bring the memory to the surface. "It was just the three of us. Esther would have come but she opted to go shopping with Elaine, you know, their daughter-in-law. Left us to have a 'proper boys day out' me and Gerry got pissed, Brian had to bring her in to port because the marshals were watching."

She laughed. As she reached for her drink and downed the last of her first glass of wine, she was pleased to see him smile at the memory. "You know, that's the first time I've seen you smile this evening. I'm sorry I missed the ceremony."

His eyes were searching now. Like piercing led searchlights, suspecting her angle. _When had this happened to him?_

"Ceremony?"

"Your presentation, the Queen's Police Medal. You were unarmed, weren't you?"

He nodded, one single incline of the head. He didn't like to think about it. He didn't like to think about it because it made him think of Jack. Jack: who received the QPD at forty, not sixty-four. Jack: who faced down those situations because he didn't care of the outcome. Jack: who was a much better man than he; a man he did not deserve to compare himself to. _Jack: who meant more to Sandra than he ever could._

"Rob?" she could hardly bear the stoic-ness of the once-vibrant man beside her. She waited. Waited until he looked at her, blue eyes meeting blue eyes with an electric charge that hadn't faded through non-contact. "What happened?"

What happened? What had happened? Nothing. Work had taken his life. His life, packed into a cardboard box in the boot of Gerry's car. Divorce had taken his wife and kids. Work had taken what was left. _She'd left._

They went to the party. Rob did his best to be magnanimous in the face of what Gerry had organised. There were people there that he hadn't seen for years; people there that he had worked with, lived with and fought with against all the bad things in the world. _What we thought were the bad things._

Murder. Theft. Deception. Life was the greatest culprit of all these things, because it was life that performed all these evil acts. Life would run out, take from you all that was dear, and tell you it was all you deserved. Arson, adultery, accident. The fire to burn in, betrayal, and all of it a happy accident. _What happened?_

He laughed. He joked. He reminisced. Any talk of future and retirement he shook off with a vague cliché. It was an act. She knew. The man she'd sat with in the pub was the real Robert now. Both sides of him broke her heart. She'd been foolish to believe he'd be the same man she'd left behind. None of them were the same as they were. Gerry was older. She was more tanned. And Robert was more of a ghost than a man. _Age, change, time._

"I'm glad you came," he flumped on the seat next to her. "I'm … I mean it, I'm really glad you came. That you're here."

She smiled and turned to face him. She assumed he was drunk.

"Sandra…" No. It was too late. Too much time had passed. _Too late._

She sniffed quickly and picked up her glass, "Happy birthday," she said.

He shook his head as he picked up his own. "Thank you," he replied. "Sandra…"

"I missed you," she said. Involuntarily. Governed by unconscious imperatives to say it.

He nodded. "I missed you too. I suppose I always wondered… never mind."

"What?"

"It doesn't matter now," he made to stand up. "I'm just glad I got to see you again." It was too much. All he'd wanted to say was that he was glad she'd come. That was all he needed to say: all he was expected to say. The only thing that was proper to say. _Too late for anything else._

"No, Robert, what did you wonder?" she needed to hear it, to know that it was real. Even if just as a whisper of a memory in the past now too far gone to hear clearly.

He sank back into the chair and took hold of her hand. Tactile contact reinforcing the stirring of emotion long forgotten in his heart and mind. Maybe his heart was beating faster, perhaps he was breathing deeper. "I always wondered if we might have had something," he said lightly. _As if it was a joke._

She couldn't reply. It was more than she might have hoped for; to hear him say the words. But there was a sadness in his tones; it was a memory of a wonder. It had been real, however. It had at least been a real wonder on his part. But a wonder consigned to the past, where her own yearn should be buried. Had to be buried. He squeezed her hand lightly and stood up.

"I'm glad you came," he said sincerely.


	3. Chapter 3

_Thank you to everyone who has been reading and reviewing this story, here is the final part. Jessie xx_

**III**

He wasn't an old man when he died. He went to bed, smiling on the eve of his sixty-fifth birthday a little before midnight. He did not rise. When his two last remaining friends called to meet him for lunch, they knocked on the door and waited for several minutes before letting themselves in with a spare key that he had given to Gerry for emergencies. It was Gerry who found him, the smile barely faded. Having bid Sandra stay downstairs, he'd knocked three times on the bedroom door with a knowing feeling of what he would find.

It happened at about six o'clock, according to the doctor. Instead of his alarm going off for work, or waking naturally at the hour simply because he did, he had gone the other way. The habit of sixty-five years turned against and walked away from. Not into a light or a room full of people but darkness and solitude.

Gerry showed the doctor out and went back through to the kitchen where Sandra was washing up.

"You ok?" he asked.

"I just keep thinking, do you think he'd mind us drinking his coffee?" she laughed gently. She stopped. Her hands covered in soapy water as she tipped the bowl upside down. "Or using his washing-up liquid?!"

Gerry stood quietly behind her.

"Silly really," she shook off the bubbles and wiped her hands dry on the tea-towel folded on the draining board. "As if those things matter!"

"You know," he said briskly. "I'm sure he wouldn't mind if we helped ourselves to something a little stronger too. Given the circumstances."

"Gerry," she chastised him more out of habit than anything else as she followed him into another room of the house where there was a scantily stocked drinks cabinet.

"Never a big drinker, Rob," Gerry commented as he judged the bottles. "Not even a bottle of por…ah, here we go, brandy."

"Gerry," she hesitated as he handed her a plentiful measure. "Drinking a dead man's brandy?"

"Drinking a friend's brandy," Gerry corrected as he lifted his glass.

"To a friend's health?" she asked sharply before putting the glass on the side. "Oh, I'm sorry Gerry. I know you're just trying to…"

"Ease the pain," Gerry told her. "Or the guilt."

"Guilt?" Sandra gave in and picked up the glass. She wasn't sure at that moment whether she wanted to drink it or throw it over him. "What have you got to feel guilty about?! You were here, you've been here with him the whole time. The last ten years, what happened to him?"

"I never said it was me who felt guilty," Gerry prompted.

"I've never seen him like he was last night," Sandra stared into the amber liquid. "Lost, almost. The Great Pretender at the party. Laughing and joking. But he wasn't like that with us, not at the pub. And that's, was, the real Rob, in the end? Wasn't it? Like he was giving –"

"You know, I always thought he had a thing for you," Gerry interrupted her, suddenly needing to distract her from telling him everything he already knew.

"I'm not speaking ill of him," she told him icily. "I'm just saying what I saw. And I'm right, aren't I? Gerry? Aren't I? He was lost. He was alone. Oh, I know he had you, but what about the rest of the time? When the door's locked at night and the house is dark; when he woke up in the middle of the night and it was cold; when… when he didn't…"

"We all die alone," Gerry said gently.

"It doesn't make it any easier though, does it?" she questioned quietly. "What if we hadn't been coming round today? Who would have found him? When? He was still warm, Gerry. What was he dreaming about, do you think? He was smiling, wasn't he? Like he was happy. Or, relieved. He wasn't happy, was he Gerry?"

"He was happy," Gerry corrected her. "He'd just retired. He was going to fix up his boat. He even talked of sailing her out to America! I told him she'd never make it that far; he said he'd aim for Greece then. He's bought a place out there, you know? He likes Greece. He wasn't pretending last night. He was genuinely moved to see those people there. People he hadn't seen for a long time; people he thought had forgotten about him; people he thought he'd forgotten about. And yes, maybe he was happier last night than he had been for a long time. Maybe that's because you were there. We never talk about you Sandra. We never talk about Jack. Oh we talk about the old days. Just not the people who left. Who left us. He was scared, I know that. Of being on his own, you're right. We joked on that I'd be the first to cop it, or the 'last one to leave him' he used to say. And no, I'm not so past it that I didn't hear that as a sick joke from a desperate man. Because he was desperate. Maybe in the middle of the night when he wakes up alone in a cold house. Maybe he's died because he just couldn't bear to wake up alone again! I don't know! But as for who would have found him… it's like asking who cared? Bloody hell Sandra, you haven't been here, you don't know! It's Saturday, right? Every Saturday lunchtime we meet up for a drink. Every Sunday he spends the day at the docks. He has lunch at a little café, the same café every Sunday. The girls know him by name and keep a table for him, even though he never asks them to. If ever he's not there, they give him hell the next week! Every Tuesday… we go for dinner at Esther's. Every Tuesday… and if work keeps us late, she keeps it warm, or we go on Wednesday. People would have noticed, they would say, they care! But where are you in this, Sandra? Where are you? In BLOODY FRANCE!"

She was stunned into silence. Everything he'd thrown at her in anger, she caught in guilt. Neither of them had drank yet. Neither of them could. Gerry's mobile rang. She barely listened as he consented to the caller that they would stay at the house until they weren't needed.

"You realise of course," he continued. "That it would be us anyway, right? We'd be the ones organising everything. Standing around, waiting for all the … crap."

"It would be you, Gerry," she told him. "I'd be in bloody France. Any other day, you'd have been here on your own."

"I need to ring Esther," he informed her blankly. "Then, I suppose, I need to ring his children."

"Rufus and Hermione," she recalled. "They weren't at the party."

"No," he agreed sadly. "They weren't."

He'd called them. They hadn't been able to come. Or hadn't wanted to.

"Find their numbers, will you?" he instructed her. "The desk in the study. He kept their addresses there. He still sent them birthday cards. They didn't send them back."

He turned his back on her and put his phone to his ear. She replaced the glass she was still holding on the side once more and went back out into the hall. Rob's study was on the ground floor, opposite the living room. She crossed the small, simply decorated hallway, glancing at the stairs. He was still lying in his bed, up there. _Alone_.

Once she had found the phone numbers and left messages on both answer machines to ring her mobile number she went back upstairs. She opened the curtains and sat in the chair in his bedroom. She barely turned when Gerry entered behind her and placed a hand on her shoulder.

"He had grandchildren," she told him unnecessarily, he already knew, of course he did. "Two girls and a boy. There were pictures. But he'd never met them."

"Not yet," he confirmed. "He was going to though. Next week, he was going to see Hermione in York on Tuesday and Rufus is in London at the weekend."

"He's still smiling," she observed.

They fell into silence until the doorbell rang and disturbed them.

"That'll be the undertaker," Gerry paused. "I'll go let them in. He loved you, you know that, don't you?"

She nodded. "I'll be down in a minute."


End file.
